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Comments matching the search Quadrant:

Renewables can't provide baseload power

John ONeill at 20:24 PM on 6 December, 2017

The proposition that 100 percent renewable energy is both possible and affordable is about to be tested in the way that really matters - in the Washington DC Superior Court. Mark Jacobson, who backs 100%, is suing Chris Clack, lead author of a paper claiming that for US electricity, 80% is an achievable figure, with the balance being legacy nuclear, biofuels, and natural gas. There's an interesting graph from the late David Mackay, plotting population density and energy consumption per head against the area required for various renewable technologies measured in watts per square metre. http://www.inference.org.uk/sustainable/data/powerd/HiRes/PPPersonVsPDen2WA.eps.png A few countries in the 'low energy use' quadrant, and even fewer in the ' low population density ' area , actually do manage 100% renewable electricity, but that's mostly hydro. Denmark claims about 40% from wind. However the eastern and western sections of the Danish grid are actually more closely tied to, respectively, Norway and Sweden ( with ten times the capacity of the whole Danish grid ) and Germany ( about twenty times as big ), than they are to each other. Energy flows, and CO2 produced by electricty generation, can be seen in real time here -https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=country&countryCode=DK The island of El Hierro, in the Canaries, also gets about 40% of its power from wind, using pumped hydro up to a handy volcanic crater to balance lulls. http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-october-november-2017-performance-update/#more-20384 Of countries invested heavily in solar, Italy and Greece manage about 8% of domestic generation, averaged over the year, much less in winter. Mark Jacobson's team has drawn up 100% renewable scenarios for fifty US states and about a hundred countries. http://thesolutionsproject.org/why-clean-energy/ In nearly every simulated case, wind and solar make up about 90 to 95% of the total projected energy use, compared to about one percent worldwide today. Jacobson claims this is possible, at least in the US, with no energy crops and practically no additional hydro dams, just more grid interconnections and more generators on the existing dams. Clack says, a bit more circumlocuitously, that he's a halfwit. http://www.vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ReplyResponse.pdf

It takes just 4 years to detect human warming of the oceans

ubrew12 at 04:18 AM on 21 September, 2017

Abraham: "ocean heat content is the key to quantifying how fast the climate is changing" Arguing online, I tell people that while global warming causes climate change, they aren't exactly the same thing. A useful proxy for 'climate change' is the surface temperature record. But when deniers note that that proxy hadn't changed temperature much for 12 years after 1998, they said 'global warming' had stopped. No, the proxy for 'global warming' is ocean heat content. I try to explain that, since the ocean is 200 times more massive than the atmosphere, trying to measure 'global' warming without it is like trying to discern the direction of a hurricane by measuring a pocket of air in its SW quadrant.

Fossil fuel funded report denies the expert global warming consensus

mancan18 at 08:11 AM on 25 February, 2016

One Planet Only Forever @7 and Jeff T @6

To evaluate a source of information you not only have to understand who the author is, but you need to pay careful attention to the language used, the style of writing and the material used to support the argument. Now, I suspect that some of the Heartland material is not written to seriously participate in the scientific debate. It is written to give a scientific veneer to the reference material used in non-scientific articles written by those who oppose the climate change argument in the popular media. These articles make it easier for denier motivated journalists who have a non-scientific background to make simple dismissive climate change denier arguments in the popular media. I have seen articles, particularly in the Murdoch press and some conservative journals like Quadrant, that use the word "discredited" when referring to John Cooke's Consensus Project. When reading opinion pieces in the Australian Press by the likes of Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, and Piers Ackerman, they often use a combination of words that are dismissive of the whole scientific basis for Climate Change without providing any real evidence. When they do provide "evidence", which is not very often, it is from institutions like Heartland and a few scientists attached to Australia's Institute of Public Affairs. I am sure that it is the same with the popular media in Canada, the US and the UK. It is very easy to make dismissive statements in this debate in the popular media. It is very difficult and not so easy for scientists and like minded journalists to refute those dismissive statements in the popular media. It requires the reader to have some understanding of scientific reasoning. Of course in scientific circles, where scientists argue in a scientific manner, dismissive arguments are not so easily made. They require evidence and logical argument. In science, it is the strength of the scientific argument and supporting evidence that wins the day, not necessarily who the author is.

Skeptical Science honoured by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

mancan18 at 12:59 PM on 18 October, 2015

Congratulations. This accolade is well deserved. The SkS site was and is a breath of fresh air in a country like Australia where the dialogue of Climate Change is dominated by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the likes of Ian Plimer and Bob Carter, the Mining Council of Australia, the conservative contrarians in the ruling Liberal National Party of Australia and the Murdoch Press. I can at least now say to those who have been influenced by their contrarian line to go to SkS and do a bit of extra reading.

However, it is not all done and dusted. Even today, the Sunday Telegraph has run a column by Miranda Devine (one of the big three along with Andrew Bolt and Piers Ackerman) that extols the virtue of digging up fossil fuels to save poor people in poor countries, and that global warming is not happening and it is all a conspiracy. I am not sure how you overcome such an overwhelmingly one sided view in the popular media. Usually the contrian debate goes along political lines or merely pays lip service to perhaps there has been some mild warming but it isn't a problem. The only response you can make to such arguments is that the person needs to understand the science more and they need to do more research. Sks is an important reference for that reason.

Unfortunately, there seems to be two types of contrarians. There is the doubter, who may well argue with you on a purely scientific level, which is Ok. They are just demonstrating the natural skepticism of science, so Sks is important in giving them extra information; AND then there is the doofus, the blind denier, who just doesn't want to know, totally ignores it all, just isn't able to understand the scientific arguments, thinks it is all political or thinks it is all some sort of greenie/socialist conspiracy. You can easily tell who they are. They will call you a "warmist" or a "carbonite" or something. Not sure that Sks is going to be helpful informing people like these. Those people wouldn't go to the Sks site anyway and are likely to use derogatory language to describe the site and the scientists who write for it. Matt Ridley did, when describing John Cooke's 97% Consensus project as being discredited, in his recent contrarian article in the June 2015 edition of "Quadrant", by using parts of the IPAs latest contarian publication "Climate Science - The Facts" to make his case.

Anyway SkS and John Cooke, well done. Keep it up, even though I sometimes feel that some of the discussion in the threads becomes a bit too esoteric for the lay public to follow at times. Mind you, I do understand why this is. It is because Sks still has to maintain scientific integrity so it can remain a valuable resource in the continuing AGW CC debate.

Global warming deniers are an endangered species

mancan18 at 10:19 AM on 25 July, 2015

In Australia, Climate Change denial does pay. Australia is one of the world's largest coal exporters, a significant proportion of it's power generation comes from coal, and coal products are an important component the national income that underpins Australia's wealth. As a result, attitudes towards climate change follows party lines, with one party, Labor, promoting it as a serious issue and the other, Liberal/National Party, while giving it token support, take a "lukewarmer" position. This is the reason that the Government has implemented it's clayton's climate change policy, "Direct Action" and has attacked the climate advisory bodies, climate change funding arrangements for developing needed technologies, and promoted many climate change deniers to important positions upon it's economic advisory bodies.

The reason for this is actually quite simple. One of the main Liberal/National party policy think tanks is the Institute of Public Affairs (the IPA). It is Australia's equivalent of the George C Marshall Institute. The IPA, along with other Liberal Party policy think tanks like the Menzies Research Centre and the H. R. Nicholls Society, all actively promote Climate Change denial. Scientists like climate change deniers, Ian Plimer and Bob Carter are attached to the IPA, providing advice related to climate change policy. Plimer is also an important member of the Mining Council of Australia, having been it's chairman, and he influences it's political stance. Gina Reinhart, Australia's wealthiest person, who made her money from huge mining projects, is also related to the IPA. She funded a Christopher Monkton speaking tour of Australia, at the height of the ETS/Carbon Tax debate when Labor tried to introduce an ETS. The IPA is also an important source of climate change denial material and underpins the political stance of Murdoch media outlets who reach around 83% of the Australian population, where right wing commentators like Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, and Piers Ackereman, and right wing shock jocks like Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, disseminate IPA inspired climate change denial material to their readers and listeners.

Also, the IPA, through it's journal, provides climate change material to its readers, and it's latest effort comes in the form of a book called "Climate Change - the Facts 2014" with contributions from Ian Plimer, Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Nigel Lawson, Bill Kininmonth, Willie Soon, Christopher Monckton, Garth Paltridge, Richard Tol, Brian Fisher, Bob Carter, Donna Laframboise, Anthony Watts, Alan Moran amongst others and other climate change deniers. Also, this book seems to form the basis of Matt Ridley's latest essay in June's Quadrant magazine "How the Climate Wars Undermine Science", where John Cook's Consensus Project is discredited, (in their eyes), by referring to it as being biased and unrepresentative.

Now I don't know about you, but, I don't think that climate change deniers are being marginalised in Australia. If anything, they are still pre-eminent due to the IPA's political and media reach. Trying to take effective action to tackle climate change in Australia has already seen the toppling of two prime minsters and a leader of the Liberal Party who did think that the issue was important. It will be a significant issue in the next election but whether the electorate will embrace it, after a fear campaign related to the hip pocket nerve and xenophobic fears related to asylum seekers, is questionable.

While it is easier to have a debate with like minded people; what is happening in Australia, while the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian do present material properly conveying the 97% consensus; demonstrates why climate change advocates need to be more engaged with the climate change deniers from the IPA, the Murdoch press, and the right wing shock jock community, because, at the moment the denier/lukewarmer argument is still pre-eminent and not getting it's proper voice with Australia's public.

Lomborg: a detailed citation analysis

Tom Curtis at 10:08 AM on 29 April, 2015

ryland @52, out of interest I did a google scholar search for the author of the opinion piece in The Australian, Jennifer Oriel. It turns out that after a publication in 2005 based on her PhD thesis, she has published two further academic journals plus one for the organ of the Australian Union of Students. From those publications she has a google scholar h-index of 3 (strictly 2 counting purely academic journals alone). She has also published two book reviews and an article for the Institute of Public Affairs, the later suggesting (though not proving) a right wing ideological bias. Her academic affiliation was (and may still be) with Deakin University, who list her research output as zero.

I looked this up because her argument is based on the charge that academic pubication is a poor measure of research output because of a supposed left wing institutional bias in academic publication. Given that is the nature of her argument, the question arises what claim does she have to expertise in this area, and it turns out the answer is none. (That it also shows she has a personal interest in rejecting h-indexes, or publication records as a measure of research merit is a bonus.)

As to her argument I will make three points.

First, it is irrelevant. What the h-index measures is the ability and willingness to make your case to those who have the relevant expert knowledge to actually pick up your mistakes in argumentation, mistatements of data, etc. Anybody unwilling or unable to do that has no place heading an academic think tank at government expense. Indeed, the selection of such a person for that role shows the government is using public money to promote its private ideology - something event the IPA should be able to recognize as bad.

Second, her argument is evassive. There is substantial evidence that that Lomborg in addition to evading scrutiny by his peers, has indulged in a host of academic sins including cherry picking, framing of straw man opponents, misrepresenting data and employing different discount rates when making cost comparisons. That is, on the public record is is reasonable to suppose that his "research" is not only not presented to his peers, but that it would not survive such a presentation because it lacks academic merit. The low h-index is merely a symptom of this larger problem.

Third, her own google scholar record proves her wrong. Specifically, it shows that google scholar cheerfully includes not only peer reviewed publications, but publications from ideological think tanks such as the IPA. It includes 18,200 articles from Australia's most influential, but not peer reviewed journal Quadrant. Ergo, even if her self serving claims about academic publication are accepted as true, there are more than sufficient alternative means of publication with a designed right wing bias to establish a significant publication record, and more than sufficient authors of articles in those journal to establish a respectable h-index.

So, all in all, her argument has no merit.

I will not bother, however, submitting an opinion piece (or even a letter) to The Australian because long experience has shown they have an overwhelming bias against policy relevant opinions they do not like. So much so that on climate change their opinion pieces appear to represent an exact reversal of the AGW consensus, with around 3% of opinion pieces from those supporting the consensus, and 97% from those opposing it.

Accumulated Cyclone Energy Questions and Answers

Rob Honeycutt at 13:01 PM on 18 January, 2013

Yes. It's called IKE. Integrated Kinetic Energy.

With IKE they actually measure wind speeds in different quadrants and at different distances from the eye.

Extreme Events Increase With Global Warming

Rob Painting at 17:36 PM on 11 November, 2011

Nobody at All @ 2 - to describe Pielke Jnr's comments as a critique is being very, very charitable. None of his comments indicate he even understands the paper. Check out the Real Climate article hyper-linked in the post above.

As for the NOAA follow up, I wonder why they change their definition of Western Russia between the original paper and their response? It's evident there is strong warming in and around Moscow (north west quadrant) in their graphic. Which is a better indicator of record-breaking temperatures in Moscow in July? Moscow itself, or the Western Russian region? We'll have to see how it plays out, but I note that Rahmstorf & Coumou have applied their analysis to a stackload of other datasets. The paper is still in pre-publication.

Bob Carter’s climate counter-consensus is an alternate reality

Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 15:25 PM on 26 June, 2011

If you read some of Carter's pieces in Quadrant, you'll find him in a single article saying all of the following: It's warming, it's not warming, it's cooling. He doesn't even know what's happening at all. In a video presentation he said he was 'agnostic' which means he doesn't know if it's warming or cooling and he thinks it cannot ever be known.

Carter is a very mixed up man and doesn't know his own mind on the matter. Makes one wonder why he ventures to offer any opinion let alone try to write a book on the subject.

Who's your expert? The difference between peer review and rhetoric

pbjamm at 03:49 AM on 18 June, 2011

sout@21
"Anyone reading even casually will see the contradictions and inconsistencies in the Quadrant articles and recognise them for utter nonsense..."

I think you are overly optimistic. Anyone reading for actual content might, but most people will read it to reinforce what they already think. No analysis at all.

Who's your expert? The difference between peer review and rhetoric

Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 02:28 AM on 18 June, 2011

The comments above are interesting. But I note the article is not talking about the 'correctness' of peer reviewed papers or even the process. What it is pointing out is that if a person is claiming to be an expert, is writing stuff contrary to mainstream science and has not published on the subject matter at all, then what they say has to be treated with extreme caution.

The Quadrant series of articles are at the extreme of nonsense of course but a good example nonetheless because the authors are promoting themselves as experts when they are not. Anyone reading even casually will see the contradictions and inconsistencies in the Quadrant articles and recognise them for utter nonsense, even if they've never heard of climate science before. However the authors are often referred to as experts by the media and the layperson might not realise the falsehood unless they checked their publication history.

Dispelling two myths about the tropospheric hot spot

Tom Curtis at 01:32 AM on 15 June, 2011

jonicol from here, you question the relevance of the 2007 IPCC AR4 because it, apparently post dated the controversy. Will you also question Santer et al, 1996. Santer et al identify the tropospheric hotspot along with the cooling stratosphere as a signature of enhanced warming found in the models. However, Santer et al conclude by saying:

"Although we have identified a component of the observational record that shows a statistically significant similarity with model predictions, we have not quantified the relative magnitude of natural and human-induced climate effects. This will require improved histories of radiative forcing due to natural and anthropogenic factors, and numerical experiments that better define an anthropogenic climate-change signal and the variability due to purely natural causes."

So, although Santer et al identify the hotspot as a feature of the model, they explicitly refuse to identify it as a unique feature of greenhouse warming. Indeed, the IPCC AR4. As near as I can identify, then, the difference between Santer et al 1996 and the IPCC AR4 (2007) is not that the IPCC conceals mention of the hotspot because of empirical failure. On the contrary they give it due prominence. Rather, the difference is that in 1996 (and in the 2001 TAR) it was not known whether the hotspot would be an effect of solar warming; whereas in 2007 it was known that it would be - at least according to the models. But neither in 1996 nor in 2007 was the hotspot claimed as a unique feature of greenhouse warming.

You claim in Quadrant that:

"The one modern, definitive experiment, the search for the signature of the green house effect has failed totally. Projected confidently by the models, this “signature” was expected to be represented by an exceptional warming in the upper troposphere above the tropics. The experiments, carried out during twenty years of research supported by The Australian Green House Office as well as by many other well funded Atmospheric Science groups around the world, show that this signature does not exist. Where is the Enhanced Green House Effect? No one knows."

That claim is now seen to be wrong on several counts. First and most importantly, the hot spot was never the "one modern definitive experiment" to establish that the greenhouse effect was responsible for most of the enhanced warming of the twentieth century. There were a variety of such "experiments". If you where ignorant of these "fingerprints", you had no basis to pretend to expertise by publishing the article, and if you where not ignorant of them, ... well, moderation policy forbids.

But not only was the hotspot not just the one signature, it was not even a signature of greenhouse warming. On the contrary, it is a signature of the lapse rate feedback, and expected negative feedback on warming. Modifying the models so that they no longer predict the hotspot would have little consequence on their predictions of greenhouse warming, but it would certainly reduce their prediction of one of the ameliorating factors.

Now, you may be able to find a scientific paper in which the hotspot is claimed to be a unique feature of a greenhouse warming - but I do not know of it. Nor has that been at any time the general view of the climate science community. Therefore, if you where an honourable man you would withdraw your Quadrant article because of a substantial, and fundamental factual error; and would post a retraction specifying that you has made an error and the nature of that error. I would certainly like to believe of you that you where honourable in that old fashioned way that thought truth was more important than reputation. We shall see.

Finally, I draw your attention to Part 2 of the article above. As you can see, the existence of the tropospheric hotspot remains an open question, and has certainly not been decided one way or the other.

Climate change is real: an open letter from the scientific community

Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 23:41 PM on 14 June, 2011

Carter et al has had a number of articles in Quadrant lately. They are all full of nonsense - even to anyone who knows nothing about climate, provided they read critically.

He even postulates in the same article that a) it's warming; b) it's not warming; c:) it's cooling; d) we don't know if it's warming or cooling.

I think he's completely lost his marbles.

(Does anyone still read Quadrant?)

Examining Dr. John Christy's Global Warming Skepticism

Tom Curtis at 19:13 PM on 14 June, 2011

jonicol @60 the claim that the "climate group" do not provide any substantial evidence is straight forwardly false. Nor is it a falsehood that could be believed by anyone who has made a serious attempt to understand the evidence for global warming, as for example, by reading the IPCC reports and referenced papers.

By publishing an an article in Quadrant, as also by taking a position as Chairman of the Australian Climate Science Coalition you have set yourself up as an expert on climate change. Despite that your writings are littered with errors and you plainly do not understand the underlying physics. You repeat egregious errors with no apparent attempt at fact checking.

For example, you could have fact checked your claim that the "tropospheric hotspot" is a "signature" of global warming by reading that part of the IPCC AR4 which deals with spatial variability in forcings, ie, section 9.2.2. There you will find not a single claim of that nature, although the difference between solar and greenhouse warming in their effects on the stratosphere is clearly mentioned. Given that, why, I wonder, have you identified as a "signature" of greenhouse warming something the IPCC does not so identify, but fail to identify as a "signature" something they clearly do mention?

Einstein may have boasted that it only takes one paper to show the was wrong. In your case it takes not even that, but only simple editorial fact checking.

Climate change is real: an open letter from the scientific community

Bern at 16:37 PM on 14 June, 2011

I'd guess the Akerman article is this one. It contains a reference to the Carter article in Quadrant.

I saw this article cross-posted on ClimateSpectator earlier today. As of now, the comments include the myths "97% of CO2 is natural emissions", "only a tiny % of the atmosphere", "it's natural", and "it's just a theory". I did my best to rebut them, and so did several other posters (which was good to see - many early postings on that site had a barrage of denier comments)

Climate change is real: an open letter from the scientific community

Chris at 13:45 PM on 14 June, 2011

John

You may want to look at Today's Telegraph where Piers Ackerman has written an article denying the science of Climate Change. He refers to an article written in Quadrant by Bob Carter and 3 other scientists that refutes all the scietific research as overblown and exaggerated. Cater even makes the claim that the peer reviewed scientists are liars.

Lindzen Illusion #4: Climate Sensitivity

sgmuller at 12:49 PM on 5 May, 2011

Skywatcher,
It is unfortunate that what Lindzen says is important simply because he so often quoted by skeptics and denialists in the mainstream radio and press.

In Monktons article in the Australian he exclusively referred to Lindzen (effectively denying that anybody else has any expertise in CO2 sensitivity). In the latest edition of Quadrant (a right-winger favourite) there is an article that refers to Lindzen as THE expert on CO2 sensitivity.

Essentially these publications deny the existence of the other scientists who have published on CO2 sensitivity, and they wonder why they get called denialists rather than skeptics.

Climate's changed before

Ned at 00:00 AM on 10 June, 2010

Upon further investigation, the "recycling" here is kind of fascinating. Johnston's document relies heavily on a 2007 paper by Lindzen in E&E (yes, another E&E paper ... Johnston is looking worse and worse).

That E&E paper was recycled by Lindzen in a 2009 blog post.

That blog post by Lindzen, in turn ... is the very same "skeptic argument" quoted by John Cook and then debunked at the top of this thread!

In other words, we've come full circle ...

Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?

Marcus at 22:12 PM on 3 June, 2010

"A simple explanation to why almost all scientific reports are in the upper right quadrant, is that that's where the money is, and that's where you have to be to get your report published. Those who are not AGW believers become outcasts."
Yet another post which shows a total lack of knowledge about how science *actually* works. The real money-& fame-has always actually been in finding something completely new/cutting edge & separating yourself from the crowd-as long as your *new* theory is backed by *evidence*. About 40-50 years ago, it was Anthropogenic Global Warming that was the new theory on the block, & it was one which has had to fight *very* hard to be accepted in the scientific mainstream-in spite of its excellent pedigree (the natural Greenhouse Effect, which had been identified by scientists more than a century earlier). Indeed, AGW theory had to fight a great deal of hostility from both within & without the scientific community. However wheras most theories, once they accumulate sufficient evidence to back them, no longer have to keep fighting quite so hard for acceptance (like Relativity & Evolution) for some reason AGW endures more resistance the more evidence that accumulates in its favor.
Also, Argus, if you want to know where the *real* money is in science, its in Geology-mostly that associated with mining & oil exploration. Strangely enough, this is also where AGW's most vociferous critics reside too. Coincidence?

Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?

Argus at 18:31 PM on 3 June, 2010

A simple explanation to why almost all scientific reports are in the upper right quadrant, is that that's where the money is, and that's where you have to be to get your report published. Those who are not AGW believers become outcasts. Also, many scientists in other fields have testified that it helps you a lot if you put something about AGW and climate in your report (and vice versa), even if it has little or nothing to do with your research.

A simple explanation to why so many non-scientists are skeptics, is that people tend to side with the underdog. If too many infallible science geeks say exactly the same thing, you tend to listen to those who say the opposite. Especially when there are reasons to get suspicious (embarrassing facts leaking out, grave errors in official reports, etc). I also think that common people have understood that climate science is debatable: it is not like the basic natural sciences - if it is at all possible to set up a global experiment, it takes 100 years before you see the outcome (and you can only set up one experiment at a time).

Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?

thingadonta at 13:45 PM on 3 June, 2010

A few points:

1) It is true that most (not all) of the peer-reviewed scientific papers (in your top right science quadrant in Figure 2) provide evidence for AGW. If the papers are right, then AGW is a concern, and your discussion makes sense.

However, most of the 'ideological influencers' in the lower left of Figure 4 don't accept that the general conclusions of the larger body of scientific papers are correct. They generally think the case is far overstated. It's this point of contention that divides and causes most of the problems.

The 'influencers' in the lower right believe there is a two-way feedback loop between the 'science', and the 'ideologicial influencers' in the top right of Fig 4, which is distorting the data. They don't believe that the scientific community is dispassionately looking at the data. They have a fatailistic perspective of human nature, that implies that it is very easy for the hard 'science' to become distorted, biased and essentially hijacked by political agendas of both the lower left, and top right, of your Fig 4.

2) Most of your discussion assumes the science is settled and irrefutable, and therfore the skeptical position on AGW is largely irrational. You imply that it is as settled as evolution or continental drift. However neither evolution, nor continental drift, make high certainty forecasts or projections based on variable rates of change, wheares climate scientists do, presumably because, unlike evolution of continental drift, one scenario could cause major problems for humanity.

Ask any biologist and he will tell you one can't know which way evolution will proceed in the future, neither will a volcanologist/geologist on longer time scales. (EG Some complex subduction zones can reverse in direction, stall, or stop).

3) You discussion is very opinionated, or what you refer to as 'biased'. You are right.

For xample, you start talking about cheaper energy and domestic jobs etc when these sort of projections are in themselves highly controversial, even if the science is correct. You dont even bother to mention that these issues are also debatable. Once again, you assume that this issue is 'settled'.

Many on both sides think that energy will become more expensive, and domestic employment and the general economy weaker, if various AGW policies are implemented.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. You can't get any more energy out of something/process than is in it. It is one of the few, rock hard, unchangeable realities of life. Most 'alternative energies' currently produce less reliable, less efficient, lower output, less transportabe, more expensive energy than eg fossil fuels; and because of the rock hard fact given above, for most alternative energies, this may never change, regardless of human ingenuity and new technologies.

Greenland rising faster as ice loss accelerates

Jeff Freymueller at 02:09 AM on 25 May, 2010

#9, #12. No, volcanoes under Greenland are not the cause of this. As pointed our already, Iceland is located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Greenland is not, and Greenland is about as tectonically and volcanically active as the Canadian Maritimes (which is to say, not at all).

I looked up the abstract for the meeting presentations that the news article cited in #12 was based on, and it is pretty vague. The URL to the abstract is about as long as the abstract, so here's the abstract:

"Rapid ice flow in the northeast quadrant of the Greenland Ice Sheet is associated with unusually high heat flow. Heat flux can be greatly increased in deep valleys to promote basal melting with additional feedback due to locally increased friction. However, crustal thinning can also enhance heat flow because the relatively thermally conductive mantle is closer to the surface. In addition to incised topography, relatively shallow Moho also occurs beneath the northeast quadrant of the Greenland Ice Sheet. We made regional three-dimensional thermal models that include the effects of topographic and mantle relief. These effects can strongly enhance the heat flux at the base of the ice sheet. "

The Moho is the seismic discontinuity between crust and mantle, so they are talking about a change in crustal thickness. Typical crustal thickness is 30-40 km, and if you cut that in half you would double geothermal heat flow, which would still be pretty small compared to the changes in heating from the top. I'd say the news article is overblown.

In any case, even if geothermal heat flow in NE Greenland is higher than average and has an effect on the ice there, the heat flow would have been high for millions of years (so no change around 2002-2003), and all of the data in the paper came from SE and W Greenland, so this argument is just a big red herring.

Climate time lag

Robbo the Yobbo at 17:41 PM on 27 July, 2009

Before Chris complains about Quadrant and Lindzen - compare it with the Trenberth and Fasula (2009) study above. Increased upward IR flux balancing CO2 warming.

'Instead the main warming from an energy budget standpoint comes from increases in absorbed solar radiation that stem directly from the decreasing cloud amounts. These findings underscore the need to ascertain the credibility of the model changes, especially insofar as changes in clouds are concerned.'

This is reinforced by a study in last weeks Science by Clement et al(copy available at http://www.drroyspencer.com/Clement-et-al-cloud-feedback-Science-2009.pdf) - note that the paper is the link - although Spencer. as usual, is worth reading on this.

Clement et al speculate that the decreasing is a positive feedback but the periods look much more like good ol' decadal SST. Increasing cloud cover since circa 2000 is a bit of a bummer for the cloud positive feedback theory - but icreasing temperature and water vapour and decreasing cloud cover was always a bit of a stretch.

It could simply be a 'chaotic dynamic' response - a climate system tuned to a 50 year cycle. But one has to wonder about a connection to the 22 year solar cycle.

Climate time lag

thingadonta at 14:25 PM on 27 July, 2009

Regarding radiative imbalances on this post, from Richard Lindzen:

"It means that increases in surface temperature are accompanied by reductions in the net outgoing radiation – thus enhancing the greenhouse warming. All climate models show such changes when forced by observed surface temperatures. Satellite observations of the earth’s radiation budget allow us to determine whether such a reduction does, in fact, accompany increases in surface temperature in nature. As it turns out, the satellite data from the ERBE instrument (Barkstrom, 1984, Wong et al, 2006) shows that the feedback in nature is strongly negative -- strongly reducing the direct effect of CO2 (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) in profound contrast to the model behavior. This analysis makes clear that even when all models agree, they can all be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity".

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/07/resisting-climate-hysteria

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